Although professional football is a men-only sport, Super Bowl parties can be a great time for women to get into the spirit of the game.
There is fun! There is food! And there is a lot of conversation!
Unless, of course, they’d rather join the guys in the other room and actually watch the game.
I know, I know … it is a tad sexist to presume that women have “no idea” what is going on in the game.
There are many, many women who know, appreciate and understand all the intricacies of the game … but all 1,526 of them live in Texas.
So, having gone to years of Super Bowl parties at Jenny and Jim McCoy’s house, ensconced safely in the dining room with other gals quietly playing “dimes” and avoiding all the yelling and commotion in the living room, I am now in a pretty good position to interpret and explain what is happening in these games.
Herewith is a handy overview of the sport to get females up to speed when going to a Super Bowl party on Sunday.
The first course of action is to know who is even playing. This would be a key component of a Super Bowl.
It is considered bad form to get to a Super Bowl party and ask, “Well, who is playing today … and what inning is this, anyway?”
So the teams in Las Vegas for the weekend are the Kansas City Indigenous People Head Bureaucrats (formerly “the Chiefs” before it was deemed politically incorrect) and the San Francisco 49ers.
The next set of business is to determine who has the ball when everybody is running all around on the turf. This is a mystery to most females trying to follow the game: where the heck is the ball?
So take it one step at a time and watch very carefully to keep your eye on the ball. Helpful guidelines about the plays and set-up here may prove useful.
First, you will see the men all line up neatly in two rows facing each other. The opposing sides have different, contrasting colors. This is an admirable idea, as you can readily tell the teams apart.
Kansas City will wear red and white, while the 49ers will wear white and red.
There … so far so good.
OK, what happens next is that all the men will bend over and hold real still.
Next up, you’ll notice there is a guy squatting in the center of the line who is conveniently called: “The Center.”
Most females at this point can all spot him holding the ball and can sense that A Big Thing is going to happen: He is about to take that ball in both hands and rather unglamorously toss it through his crotch to a guy behind him. (This is one reason why women don’t play football).
Well, at least we know who has the ball for the moment.
Then, one guy on The Center’s team suddenly backs off from the line, and starts running in a sneaky-looking style down behind his teammates, while another guy on the other team does the exact same thing.
Next that Center guy with the ball wiggles his hips and then suddenly ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!
Ball! Ball? Who’s got the ball?
The guys are yelling, “Get it! Throw it! Run, baby RUN!” The girls are saying: “Where is it? Who has it? I can’t tell where it is!!”
The guys at the party will now smack their jaws and groan and pound the table with their fists as they watch all the players run to one spot on the field and fling themselves on top of a big pile of other grown men.
Meanwhile the women are saying “B-b-but … where’s the ball? Who’s got the ball?”
Some man in an unattractive, vertically striped shirt will blow a whistle and then the players will peel away from that big heap to figure out who is on the bottom, because — surprise! — he is the one with the ball.
He also has “yardage.”
Women — because they sew — understand yardage and think this means the men in those skimpy, tight, form-hugging football uniforms (this is also a reason why women wouldn’t play football) will be refitted with something more roomy through the hips.
No such luck.
What yardage means is that his team will get three more turns before kicking the ball through the big “H” at the end of the field.
If you do this more often than the other team, you will win! So this is important.
Now, if you don’t want to kick the ball through the “H,” your other choice is to run with the ball to the line at the end of the field and then kiss the ground and dance.
This sounds easy enough! — but there are huge men who will try to stop you first.
They are enormous — roughly around 6-foot-6 — and they weigh about 420 pounds, which is why they are all called, um, something like “The Wide End.”
(No self-respecting woman would take that title on … another reason women would never play football).
The man who runs with the ball does not hold it high up in his hand like you see in basketball or baseball. In football, the guy who catches the ball will hold it close to his chest.
Then he will run as fast as he can toward the “H” while twitching his shoulders back and forth and back and forth.
If he can do this successfully enough times without anyone holding onto his ankle, he gets to go to Disneyland at the end of the Super Bowl.
A touchdown! Now what? So … when a member of one team makes a good play down in the end zone, then all the other guys on his team will pat his fanny.
If men tried to congratulate a woman for making a “good play” and teammates patted her fanny down in her end zone, she would file a major league sexual harassment lawsuit in federal court.
That is the final reason that women don’t play football.